LITMIR.BIZ

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guest,’ he added dryly.

      ‘Don’t waste your breath arguing with me, Miss Summers,’ he warned, placing his finger beneath her chin and exerting gentle pressure so that she had no option but to shut her mouth and swallow the angry words that were bursting to escape. ‘I will be in charge of the stables for the duration of my stay at Hardwick Hall, and I refuse to have anyone working here who can’t pull their weight. If you’ve broken your ribs, or sustained other injuries today, you’ll be a liability I can do without.’

      Unfazed by her furious expression, he smiled, revealing his gleaming white teeth that contrasted with his bronzed skin. ‘I can’t keep on calling you Miss Summers all summer—can I, Rachel?’

      His voice had altered, and was now as thick and sensuous as molten honey, but Rachel was determined not to be impressed. Clearly he was an outrageous flirt, as well as the most arrogant man she had ever met, and she was furious with her treacherous body for responding to him. She was aware of a tingling sensation in her breasts and a shocking yearning for him to push her down into the hay, lower himself onto her and kiss her like she had never been kissed before.

      ‘What do you mean by “all summer”?’ she croaked. ‘I know you’re here for the polo tournament, but surely you’ll be going back to Argentina straight afterwards.’

      Diego shook his head, his smile widening at Rachel’s look of dismay. ‘As a matter of fact, I usually spend a couple of months—when it is winter in Argentina—at my polo school just outside New York. But this year the Earl has invited me to Hardwick to train the polo ponies.

      ‘So you see, Rachel,’ he drawled softly, moving his finger from under her chin and gently tracing the shape of her lips with his thumb pad, ‘for the next month or so I will be your boss, and you will have to abide by my rules. Go to the hospital with Arturo, get yourself checked over, and when you can come back to me with a clean bill of health you will be welcome here. Until then, if I catch so much as a strand of your pretty blonde hair near Piran’s loose box, there will be trouble. Entiendes?’

      There was a hint of steel behind his mocking tone that warned Rachel he would be a dangerous man to cross. Incensed by his high-handedness, she jerked her head away, disgusted to find that she was trembling. The feather-light caress of his thumb over her lips had been shockingly intimate, and the idea that she would be working for him over the summer was downright disturbing.

      ‘Earl Hardwick personally appointed me as head groom, and I’m sure he’ll have something to say when I tell him you’ve banned me from doing my job,’ she said furiously.

      ‘The Earl had a hard job persuading me to come to Gloucestershire rather than New York, and I think you’ll find that he’ll go along with anything I say,’ Diego replied with a breathtaking arrogance that made Rachel itch to slap him. ‘Besides, you are not banned, Rachel. I am very much looking forward to working with you once I am assured that you suffered no serious injuries today. I have great plans for Hardwick Polo Club, and I have a feeling that you and I will be spending a lot of time together.’

      The sensuous gleam in his eyes was unmistakable, and a quiver ran down Rachel’s spine. She wanted to jump up and tell him to get lost—tell him that she’d rather work for the devil than him. But she couldn’t move. For one thing, her ribs were seriously painful—but the real reason, she acknowledged dismally, was that she was trapped by his magnetism and utterly captivated by his raw masculinity. He was the most potently virile man she had ever met; she could not tear her eyes from his sensual mouth and when he lowered his head slowly towards her, she ceased thinking, almost ceased breathing, her heart hammering with frantic excitement when it seemed that he was going to kiss her.

      To her intense disappointment, he did not. Instead, he straightened up abruptly and moved away from her, giving her a mocking smile that added to her humiliation.

      ‘Wait here for Arturo,’ he ordered. He strode across the barn and halted in the doorway to glance back at her. ‘It promises to be an interesting summer, don’t you think, Rachel?’ he taunted softly.

      CHAPTER TWO

      TO RACHEL’S relief an X-ray showed that she had not broken any bones when Piran had thrown her, but her ribs and shoulder were badly bruised and the doctor was adamant that she should not ride for a few days.

      ‘I doubt you’ll be able to move tomorrow,’ he told her as he handed her a prescription for strong painkillers. ‘Take two of these twice a day, and if I were you I’d go to bed and stay there.’

      It was the most ridiculous suggestion Rachel had ever heard. She had never spent a day in bed in her life, and as far as she was concerned the fact that she hadn’t suffered any fractures meant that she would be fit to work at the stables tomorrow.

      But the following morning she woke in agony and the sight of her purple bruises forced her to accept that she was in no fit state to ride her bicycle up to the stables, muck out loose boxes and then spend the morning exercising the horses.

      Besides, even if she managed to get to the stables, Diego Ortega was likely to send her straight home again. The Argentinian was the most arrogant individual she had ever met. Infuriatingly, he was also the sexiest man she had ever laid eyes on, she acknowledged grimly. She cringed when she remembered how she had been so mesmerised by him that she had stared at him, hoping he would kiss her, and his amused smile had told her that he had known exactly what she was thinking.

      The day dragged endlessly, but fortunately the painkillers worked well and by early evening Rachel was feeling less like she had been trampled on by a herd of bulls and was bored of her enforced isolation. One of the other stable-hands sent her a text saying that Diego had returned to the Hall, where he was staying as a guest of Earl Hardwick. He was unlikely to visit the stables again tonight, Rachel decided as she cycled through the woods to the Hardwick estate, wincing every time she hit a pothole on the path.

      Piran was gratifyingly pleased to see her. From his gleaming coat she guessed that someone must have groomed him, but she gave him another brush and fed him a couple of peppermints, and did not notice she had company until a figure came up silently behind her.

      ‘Jasper, you’ll give me a heart attack if you creep up on me like that,’ she snapped when a faint sound made her swing round and she almost collided with Earl Hardwick’s son and heir. ‘It’s a pity you weren’t so quiet on your bike yesterday,’ she muttered, feeling the same uneasy tension that always gripped her when she was alone with Jasper. The young Englishman was reputedly one of the most eligible bachelors among the landed gentry and, with his blonde hair flopping onto his brow, Rachel could see why women might be attracted to him. But he did nothing for her, and she hated the way he looked at her as though he were mentally undressing her.

      ‘Yeah, I heard Piran threw you when you were jumping him yesterday.’ Jasper lounged in the stable doorway, blocking Rachel’s path so that she instinctively stepped backwards away from him.

      ‘It was your fault, not his. The noise of your bike scared him. I wish you wouldn’t ride it near the paddock.’

      Jasper gave a careless shrug. ‘It’s my land—or it will be one day. You know, it would pay you to be nice to me, Rachel,’ he said with a sly smile, reaching out and running his finger down her cheek. ‘One day I’m going to be very rich—as long as my dear papa doesn’t blow the family fortune on the polo club. God knows how much he’s had to fork out to persuade Diego Ortega to come here and share his “expertise”,’ he added petulantly. ‘Ortega is already a multimillionaire, and the money the old man’s paying him could have gone on increasing my paltry allowance.’

      ‘Mr Ortega is reputed to be one of the best trainers in the world,’ Rachel murmured. ‘And his appearance at the Hardwick Polo Tournament has trebled ticket sales, which must be good for the club.’

      ‘Ortega is a notorious playboy,’ Jasper said sulkily, clearly resenting Rachel’s defence of him. And why had she spoken up for Diego when the first thing he had done since his arrival had been to ban her from the stables? she wondered irritably. ‘My sister was all over him like

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